


A lullaby, then a waking song

by MirandaHamilton



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Expanded Scene, Introspection, Kissing, M/M, Talking, happiness, hopefully sweet with a bit of sexiness, mentions of cigarettes and smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28981536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirandaHamilton/pseuds/MirandaHamilton
Summary: An imagining of what a longer final scene between Thomas and Richard in the movie might have been like, a little angst but happy and optimistic. Kissing and sitting on laps and heart-to-heart talks and how they need to see each other again.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	A lullaby, then a waking song

Every word and every touch is a jewel.

Thomas feels them blissfully pile up in his chest as Richard kisses him, whispers how beautiful he is, strokes his fingers through his hair, cradles his cheeks in both hands and says that though they’ll soon be parted in body, there are golden clasps holding their hearts together in spirit.

Thomas will wait for him. Finally, Thomas learns that waiting can mean winning.  
***

Thomas thinks about all the hours he’s spent in the servants’ yard out back, smoking cigarette after cigarette, pretending that every time he touched his mouth that it was another man’s fingers and not his own. Because pretending was better than nothing. It had to be.

He would slip into reveries as he flicked endless ashes away. In one of them, he would return to the servants’ quarters, and there would be a man at the table in the dining room, an empty chair next to him. A chair for Thomas, who would sit down in it and have his face pulled gently towards a pair of soft lips that would press against his cheek. A warm voice that would say, loud enough for all to hear, “My darling. I’ve been expecting you. Welcome back. Welcome home.”

And everyone would know that Thomas was loved. That the man of his dreams loved him, and would shout it from the rooftops if he could.

Thomas has lain in bed for years imagining that at any moment, a man will climb in next to him and pull him close, chest to chest, beating hearts in rhythm. It’s a tactic he’s used to fall asleep again and again to try to derail the parade of lonely thoughts that marches around the vacant spaces inside him. If he just waited long enough, it would happen. The man would come and hold him. Just wait.

He’d wait until he’d fall asleep and dream of warmth and pleasure and then, every morning, wake up alone.

The first thing he’d say in the morning would be something snide or flippant at the breakfast table. The others would sigh. _Why can’t you be nice, Mr. Barrow? We’ve been naught but kind to you. Would it truly hurt you not to laugh at us? Not to make comments that a gentleman wouldn’t dream of?_

 _It’s all I have,_ he’d wanted to scream a thousand times. _My bitter wit and my sharp tongue. I’ve got nothing else in this godforsaken world that I can call my own or that feels like my own. I’ll never_ be _a gentleman. My hands are bound, but why does my tongue have to be? The least I should be allowed to do is speak my mind without having to honey my words. That’s the only power I’ll ever have, and don’t I deserve some measure of it like every human being? Even if it’s only saying what I want and how I want to? And if it’s scathing, what of it? My words are mine. Pardon me for wanting to have some control. If I have none, then why am I even here?_

The others. _But you resent everyone, Thomas. We try to be kind. If you can’t return the favor, you’ll only get what you deserve. Be a_ good _man for once._

He’d lie in bed and hold his blanket in his fists so tightly that his nails would tear the cloth.

 _What I deserve. And if you knew about the rest of me, the piece in the dark that you would tell me to keep in the dark if you knew about it? Do I deserve what I didn’t ask for?_ Hold your tongue _, you want to say. That is so very rich. I have been holding it for so long that there might as well be an empty space in my mouth. I’m starving. All of you couples. You are blessed. Do you know how much? No. You don’t._

_I will not blunt my edges. They are the one possession I can make use of. If you have a problem with my cursed birth, I advise you to take it up with the hands that shaped me._

_I certainly have._

_And there is never, ever a response._

  
***

“When did you know?” Richard sits and pulls Thomas onto his lap, wrapping his arms around Thomas’s waist. The chair isn’t comfortable but they have nowhere to lie down, and to be physically close to Richard like this is worth any discomfort, would be worth any scraped knee or bee sting, anything in the world.

Thomas lays his head on Richard’s shoulder and relishes the soft warmth of Richard’s breath on his face. “When I was thirteen. That figures. The unluckiest of numbers to discover I was among the unluckiest of men.” He sighs. “And yourself?

Richard presses his forehead into Thomas’s hair. “About the same. Are we the same age?”

“About, I think.”

“Then we didn’t know it yet but we were already together.”

Thomas breathes him in. “I like that thought. Despite the misery of the journey. How did you cope with it?”

Richard huffs a dry laugh. “I didn’t. Not really. I was confused. Of all the people in the world to be born in such a way. Why me? So I bottled it up and pushed the bottle into the depths of myself. I told myself never to think of it. But how could I not? I’d see a handsome man in the street and would be struck still. All I would be able to think was that I wanted to run my hands underneath his clothes. So it was useless. The bottle resurfaced again and again.”

Thomas sighs. “If I had had a bottle, I would have been terrible at pushing it down. I said a lot of things to everyone that were probably unforgivable.”

“You were in pain. In agony.” Richard tips Thomas’s chin towards his face so that their eyes meet. “Forgive yourself. You deserve to.”

Thomas feels his heart clench and unclench at the simple poignancy of the words. “They’d say you’re too soft on me.”

Richard scoffs. “Forget what they say. If you want to change the way you speak to them, then change it. But don’t put yourself through the wringer for being the type of bitter that they could never understand.”

Thomas traces Richard’s lips with one fingertip. “You understand, though. Not just about the loving of men. But about my whole self.”

“I haven’t known you long, but I think I do.” Richard kisses Thomas’s fingertip. “I bottled up the anger. That doesn’t mean it didn’t sometimes leak out. I’ve said things I’m not proud of. I’m not perfect. But if it comes from a place of that special pain, I don’t let myself believe I’m a bad person.”

Thomas closes his eyes as Richard brushes his fingers through Thomas’s hair, ruffling it and then smoothing it out. He leans into the touch. If touch could be a color, this one would be the dazzle of stars.

He turns Richard’s words over in his mind. “That’s it, isn’t it. I’m not a bad person. I can look back at my life and cringe at things I said and did. But I’m not bad. There’s so much I want to give. I can’t be bad if I want to give. I know that much is true.”

Richard takes Thomas’s hand and kisses his knuckles. “What do you want to give?”

Thomas relishes the feel of Richard’s warm mouth. “No one else here can understand my pain, but maybe I can still help take away pain. In little ways. I don’t know. I’d give my ear to listen to their thoughts. That’s a start, isn’t it? To listen, and to want to do so without rolling my eyes.”

“That’s a start. Do what feels right.” Richard takes his mouth away and grasps both of Thomas’s shoulders. “Now listen to me, then. No rolling of eyes.”

“Oh?”

  
“There’s something you can do for me. It’s important.”

“Go on.”

“There’s a part of you I haven’t kissed yet, and I’ll be falling apart until I do.”

Thomas smiles through a shiver of anticipation. It’s so strong it almost wracks his body, tripping down his spine. His hands shake. Whatever Richard wants, it won’t last long. He will have to leave soon. But the image of new touching sets a match to Thomas’s blood and ignites it. It burns sweetly as Richard places a fingertip in the hollow of Thomas’s throat.

Richard’s eyes are beautiful, especially in their earnestness and the sheen of desire in them. “May I?”  
  


Thomas tries to say yes. His voice has disappeared into the space between his heartbeats, though, so he has to settle for nodding over and over.

Richard’s smile is as lovely as a wildflower blossoming. He leans his face into Thomas’s neck and holds his lips over the hollow of his throat before kissing in it and then slowly up his neck and around the skin under Thomas’s chin. Each kiss feels unique, no two alike, each one its own shape whittled out of the stuff of desire by loving hands.

It’s better than any of Thomas’s dreams and fantasies. The warmth, the traces of wetness, the feeling at all of another man against his bare skin. His vision goes hazy and he lays his hand on the back of Richard’s neck without thinking, gently pressing the pads of his fingers into it. Richard makes a humming noise and kisses up to Thomas’s jaw. Thomas shivers again, blood coursing so hotly that he’s sure that no water could ever cool it. He turns his head until his lips find Richard’s again. They kiss, open mouthed, hungry, needy. And all the needier for being able to provide each other with what they need.

This isn’t a dream in bed. This is something real, woven with strong fibers that challenge any part of the world to try to pick them apart. They might try. But they will never succeed.

  
***

They don’t have much time, but they make the most of it. Between kisses, Richard tells Thomas about his life, how he knows that he’s privileged and has it better than uncountable people. He tells him that even knowing such, he still pines for a life of his own. He feels guilty, but he can’t help it. He would love a flat in the London. He would love his own car. He would love simple pleasures like going to the pub with mates and walking a dog through a park filled with strolling people.

“Idyllic in its way. The only other thing I’d need was a man to love. And I’d give up all the rest for that.”

Thomas traces Richard’s cheekbone and kisses a line along it. “How would you manage that?”

Richard sighs and pulls Thomas closer. “Truthfully, I don’t know. Maybe I’d live with the man under the pretense that I was renting him a room. And if that weren’t possible, I’d keep up the illusion that he was simply a dear friend whom I enjoyed visiting, and vice versa. I wish I knew for certain. I wish it were all safe. Don’t we all, though? All of us?” 

“Yes.” Thomas looks down at their entwined hands. “I think about the other men at the club. The ones who are in prison now, who had no one to rescue them. How will they end up?”

He glances up to see Richard squeezing his eyes shut. When Richard speaks, there’s a crack running through his voice. “I don’t believe in God. But I pray anyway. Through the helplessness. It’s all I can do. And if the day comes when I can do more, so help me, I’ll be the first one to start carving out the door to freedom. Watch me.”

Thomas kisses his temple. “I will. And will work hand-in-hand with you, too.”

  
***

The footsteps outside the door begin to pick up, voices rising, the floorboards creaking. It really is time for Richard to go.

“There’s something you can do for me, too,” Thomas tells Richard as he finally slides off his lap.

Richard is already reaching for him again. “And what’s that?”

Thomas hurriedly untucks his shirt and loosens his collar. “I’m a handsome man in the street. You want to run your hands underneath my clothes. Here’s your chance.”

He has to clap a hand over Richard’s mouth as Richard nearly chokes on a laugh. But Richard wastes no time, eyes feverish as he presses their foreheads together and slides his hands under Thomas’s shirt. The sensation is enough to make Thomas fall into the chair again, head tipped back, breaths short and stuttering. Richard’s hands are warm and smooth and every press and slide of his palms on Thomas’s chest is enough to make Thomas bless the day he was born. He didn’t know that was possible, and it puts a new wind into the sails of his spirit.

It’s less than a minute before Thomas is fixing his clothes back again and Richard is fingering a sheen of sweat off his forehead. When Thomas meets his eyes, Richard smiles with all his teeth. “Christ,” he whispers.

Thomas takes his hand and laughs. “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”

Richard kisses his hand. “I don’t. It’s a habit. I know now that there’s a Promised Land, though. You just lead me there.”

  
***

Thomas will wake up in the morning and resume work. He’ll have his breakfast like everyone else, perform his duties all day, have a cigarette break and read the paper and chit chat with a few friends, have dinner, go to bed. It will be a typical day.

He’ll wake up with no one in his bed. He’ll watch all the married couples and all the flirtations as always. The stones weighing on his heart when he sees all the love in the air won’t disappear. Scars and bruises will still twinge.

But he won’t stop breathing, and he won’t want to stop breathing. He’ll see Richard again someday. Somehow, he knows this. And until then, he can cradle against his heart the knowledge that happiness doesn’t exist exclusively in a realm locked against any key he may try. For all the pain he’s inhaled and exhaled over the long, long years, there finally exists an air not full of the ghosts of hopes he never had in the first place. Sleep, and wake up. There’s grace in the world. There’s grace for men who love men. Hold on. Don’t let go.

  
***

Richard traces his fingers down Thomas’s spine, then rests his palm against the small of Thomas’s back. He pushes it gently to press their bodies even closer together.

“I want to kiss you for hours,” he whispers, laying his cheek against Thomas’s.

Thomas half laughs, still dizzy at hearing sweet affections spoken to him. He feels unmoored from his body for a moment, until he lets Richard be the compass that guides him back into himself. “If only we had hours,” he whispers.

“I know.” Richard kisses him once, breaks away, and then kisses him so desperately that Thomas has to grip Richard’s arms to keep his balance, even as he absorbs every glorious press and angle of the kiss and gives it back with his own mouth.

Richard breaths shakily as he cups Thomas’s face between his palms. “But I need you to know that I want to kiss you for hours. I need you to know how much I’d give to be able to do that.”

Thomas buries his face into the crook of Richard’s neck. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels his hot tears rolling down into Richard’s collar. He pulls his head away. “I’m sorry.”

He swipes the back of his hand across his face until Richard pulls his hand away and kisses Thomas’s tear-stained fingers. His voice is soft but adamant, sunshine on a diamond. “Those are the only words of yours I want to paint over so that you never feel the need to say them again. I’d cover them with white paint. The color of newness. Freshness. Hope.” He runs the backs of his fingers down Thomas’s cheeks. “My darling.”

And Thomas nearly cries again at that. He imagines his red heart beating against a white expanse but leaving traces of a new color, one he’s never seen before. One he’s dreamed of, but that’s vanished like mist under sudden sun each time he’s woken, but found now in Richard. He doesn’t know what hue it is as it blossoms against the white. Only that it exists, and that he finds it more beautiful than heaven and earth. He breathes up from the bottom of his lungs and lets out his blissful sigh against Richard’s lips. They have only seconds left, but Thomas knows what to say, knows what his parting gift to Richard can be. A love note in a voice run through with ecstatic gratitude.

“Then I’m truly not sorry. I need you to know I’m not sorry, so I’m telling you right now. Right now, and forever. We’re still on a path together, and I’ll keep hearing your footfalls after you leave. Just knowing you’re beside me gives me courage. I feel like you’ve sung me a lullaby, that the sound of it soothed me, and I found peace and rest. And then you rang bells for me, clear-sounding bells, to wake me up with a song that tells me that there’s a new world. One in which your hand never leaves mine. You beautiful man. Now one more kiss before you go. And then we’ll lose count of how many we give each other, when I see you again.”

And that day comes.


End file.
